


"A Falcon, Tow'ring In Her Pride Of Place..."

by GenExHexed



Category: Fall Out Boy, The Young Blood Chronicles - Fall Out Boy (Music Video)
Genre: M/M, Non-Graphic Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-13
Updated: 2021-02-13
Packaged: 2021-03-13 18:48:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29406474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GenExHexed/pseuds/GenExHexed
Summary: One of the four has been taken. The rest are in danger. He needs his allies...*Find. Warn. Bring them.*
Relationships: Minor or Background Relationship(s), Patrick Stump/Pete Wentz
Comments: 6
Kudos: 6





	"A Falcon, Tow'ring In Her Pride Of Place..."

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SnitchesAndTalkers](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SnitchesAndTalkers/gifts).



She was torn from a dream as the mews' door slammed open. All traces of sleep-borne daze vanished in an instant as the jesses were unfastened, and a familiar forearm was gently pushed against her knees. Hooded still, she relied on the familiar routine and the welcome scent of one of the few humans she truly cherished, in order to step forward and clutch this new perch. She smelled the scents of the mews—stone and straw and cut pine timber, and felt the warmth of sunlight streaming in from the bank of windows that faced the east. Even more acute than her sense of smell, she relied on her hearing-- charting the echoes of human boots striking the stone flags of the floor, the harsh sound of her human's rapid breathing, the creak of the doorway that led to the wide steps to the roof.

  


The door slid open with a groan of protesting rails. The sunlight changed from a diffuse warmth to a direct assault, heat beating down on the roof where she stood with her human. A vagrant breeze ruffled her pinions, and she shifted her weight uneasily, from claw to claw on her human's forearm. She heard a vague soothing sound, her human's rumbly voice, and suddenly the hood was lifted.

  


She blinked, keen eyes settling rapidly to the blinding light, and trained her gaze around, searching for anything immediately recognizable as threat or target. Neither presented itself; instead, her attention was drawn by an irresistible figure, and she locked eyes with her human.

  


She had no idea why she understood this particular man. Why, unlike the rest of his loud, smelly, and occasionally dangerous species, this one spoke to her. When amber-brown eyes had met golden ones for the first time when she was newly fledged, her mind had been flooded in ideas, sensations, that she instinctively craved. _Freedom_ , he thought at her. The endless vault of the sky, winds for the riding. Prey to track, pinpoint and dive for, an exhilarating plunge ending with her talons sinking into fresh bloody meat. A sated belly, a tranquil aerie in which to perch and rest. And finally, a concept new to her. Another mind, bonded and loyal. Ally. Soul-friend. The perils of the world halved, when united with this human mind.

  


Staggered from that initial mental onslaught, she had challenged him. _For me?_

  


Brown eyes had gazed steadily back at her. _That and more_ , he answered silently. _Be mine. Be my word from the sky, my eyes in the air; and this I promise you._

  


She had blinked, cocked her head quizzically while evaluating him. Nothing about the human smelled of deceit. His eyes were clear and fierce, and he had almost vibrated, with the same restless energy that fueled her as well. After a moment more of thought, she was resolved. Her head dipped slowly, and, eyes never leaving the man, she had rested her beak gently on his shoulder.

  


Their partnership had grown from that day; she grew used to that part of her mind which accepted that her health and satisfaction were strengthened by willingly following the wishes of the man before her. He not only saw to her needs, but treated her with a respect and an affection that warmed her like sunlight, in return.

  


And that history, in part, was what made her shriek, angrily, when her eyes met his today. _Taken. Caught. Snared and wounded_ , his mind screamed. Images assaulted her mind, and she reeled under the sensations of the man's grief and rage. She knew, in the abstract, that her human had his own bonds with others of his kind. In particular, a trio of human males about his own age seemed to be constant companions. None of them quite spoke to her in the way that he did, but they seemed to admire her and treat her with respect. They seemed benign.

  


Yet the smallest of the three, the one whose head seemed forever covered, had always attracted her attention more. Pale, with human hair color only a few shades darker than the foxes she loved to chase, he seemed the gentlest of the group. She noticed that unlike the others, he often emitted sound. Not always the verbal speech that she heard her human using with the others, but frequently softer calls, that ebbed and flowed from him like ocean tides. At times they almost reminded her of croons, like those between a mother hawk and her chicks. They soothed, and had the interesting effect of making her own human's mind seem calmer and brighter. The one time her human had asked her to stand upon the smaller male's shoulder, the latter had flinched, when the weight of her talons had settled fully upon him. But then he steadied, and had exclaimed with cautious delight as he looked up at her. Cool green-blue eyes, reminding her of a summer stream, met hers. Very delicately, he had reached towards her, offering a generously sized chunk of fresh beef. With equal courtesy, she had lowered her own head, deigning to take the morsel, making sure that his human fingers were not nipped up along with the gift. Slowly, long-fingered human hands had reached, daring to gently stroke the line of her wings. She responded in kind, nuzzling her wickedly sharp beak along the shell of his ear (noting with interest that the portion of human hair that she could feel indeed seemed as soft as the fox fur that it resembled).

  


Her human had laughed, when she had succeeded in dislodging the head covering the small male always used. Her nuzzling had redoubled, when she discovered he had a whole head full of that soft, reddish-brown hair. “See, 'Trick? She likes you!” he had said, smiling. The sounds from the smaller male had changed to a rumbling chuckle, and he gathered up his head covering from where she had knocked it, but she noticed that the happy tenor of his sounds had not really changed—still sounding gentle as he muttered “Hmph. Not much difference in how either of you behave, actually.” He had grinned at her.

  


Him. It was he who was hurt, captured. Knowledge crashed into her brain, and she understood more; that this short fox-like male had a bond with her human that was even deeper and broader than the one she had. Borne of knowledge and shared experience, patience and love, she knew it would truly kill her human if he lost this bond with the other.

  


Fiercely refusing to contemplate the thought of life without her human, she flexed her wings, and trained the burning intensity of her gaze upon him. She spoke in feelings and readiness, images that she knew her human understood as easily as words. _Point me_.

  


The forearm she rested on thrummed with tension, her human's hands clenched into fists. The man's normal demeanor was consumed, overwhelmed, with fear for his friend and desperate urgency. Many hunters had to have taken his friend, he knew. His friend was skilled enough, trained enough, to have taken down any single opponent. And if they faced a group of enemies (like a pack of wolves, she thought), then her human needed allies as well.

  


The images of her human's other companions, the final two in their quartet, formed in her mind. One with hair that graduated from a dark brown that matched her chest markings, to a sharper red-brown color that nearly matched her human's small humming friend. This human had the most colorful skin of any she had seen, with markings that traveled up and down his limbs and torso. He was usually found with a guarded expression and she knew, from experience, this one's uncanny strength and endurance.

  


The pictures in her mind shifted, and the final companion's image formed. Tall, slim, eyes as blue as the sky, and hair so ebullient she had always tried to steal bits of it during nesting season. This one had a scent like smoke and sun-baked meadows. His expression was wry and focused, and he was usually found hunched lovingly over one of the strange devices of wood and metal threads that seemed always to be found in her human's home, coaxing amazing sounds from it.

  


_Find. Warn. Bring them_. The need burned into her brain, as sharp as any compulsion. With a sudden pivot, her human strode swiftly to the edge of the roof. In a single smooth gesture, his arm came up. At the peak of his reach, her knees bent. Her wings flexed. With a powerful downbeat, she lunged aloft.

  


Rapidly pumping her wings, she gained the thermals that rose like columns from the stone and steel buildings below her. She took a moment to orient herself, checking in her mind for the small brilliant beacons that represented her human's friends. She compared them against the path her human had told her she could take to reach them the quickest, and arrowed off in that direction.

  


_Fastflydangerhe'scaughtsavefindbring_ _ **save**_ the constant litany poured through her mind. Her muscles powered her at speeds no other living creature could match; what she was not aware of was how the nature of her bond meant her human had lent her other skills of his own. She was persistently unnoticed; everyday humans, and even their ubiquitous CCTVs in public areas, somehow registered nothing as she passed by. In broad daylight, she was the perfect stealth messenger.

  


She drew closer to a large urban lot—a scorching sea of blacktop, filled in regular intervals with the large metal vehicles the humans so loved, and the first mental beacon flared to brightness. There. The multicolored human. This was good, they needed his strength. She paused, then stooped to a dive. Her eyes never left the man, and to her surprise, something of her urgency seemed to register in him. He tensed, eyes sweeping ahead of him, and then, as she leaned towards him in the air, he looked up. His featureless dark eyecoverings told her nothing, until he pulled them off his face and looked up at her in dawning recognition and concern.

  


A flash of movement. Another human figure, dressed darkly and with face covered, moved towards her human's friend with light and terrible purpose. The multicolored male, not seeing the other's stealthy approach from behind, continued to wait for her to descend. She saw something gleam in the dark-clad human's hand, and screamed a warning.

  


Horror. She was too late; the black-clad human jabbed something against the other's neck, and he collapsed bonelessly to the pavement. The attacker, pocketing her tool, caught the multi-colored man under his arms and used his momentum to drag him forward. A large vehicle, dark as the attacker's clothing, screeched to a stop in front of the two. Its side door slid open; without hesitation the attacker shoved the body towards the opening.

  


In a fury, she angled her dive to come to the aid of her human's friend. She burned with the need to sink her talons into the meat of the attacker's neck, perhaps tear out an eye. She heard a startled human voice from the depths of the vehicle, and the door in front of her began to slide quickly shut. Suddenly her vengeful plunge through the air became a desperate swerve to avoid crashing into the metal wall of the van. With doors sealed, its engine roared to life and it sped off, leaving her panting, wings in a heap, atop another of the parked vehicles.

  


No. No. In all the years since she had first met her human, she had never once failed at a task given to her. Rage and shame burned within her; she knew now it was vital to reach her human's last free companion. But was he a target as well? She powered aloft again, heedless of the deep gouges she left behind in the paint of the hapless vehicle below her.

  


Brief confusion; she focused on the mental beacon of her human's third friend—but found he was moving. She gazed below her, and recoiled from the noxious acrid fumes that rose to choke her. It was one of those drinking stations, where the humans led their ubiquitous metal vehicles. She saw the long tubes, connecting the vehicles to the station structure, and wondered how anything could drink a liquid that burned the nose so badly. But there—there he was. Her second target, her human's tallest friend, emerging from his own vehicle and preparing to set up the drinking apparatus for it. She veered, slicing in lower towards the ground, wasting no time before calling out to attract his attention. Her human's tall friend immediately paused, letting his vehicle remain without fuel, as his eyes took in her approach. He quickly glanced along the aerial path from which she had come, and his eyes widened. Grim comprehension seemed to burn in his eyes.

  


And then, déjà vu. Not that she thought of it in such human terms--but she felt sickeningly as if she were living the same loop of events all over again. From the shadows of the station, where other drinking vehicles and their owners clustered, a lithe form quickly drew closer to her human's friend. A dripping rag was tightly clenched in its fist. Willing the man to turn around, to sense the threat closing in on him, she called out desperately. But to no avail.

  


The dark clad figure yanked the curly-haired man's head back, and clamped the wet rag firmly across his nose and mouth. She felt a brief contempt—surely the attacker couldn't think a damp face was going to stop her human's friend from fighting back? But the results were sudden and appalling. Her human's friend's eyes rolled back in his head, and without a sound he dropped. The attacker, somewhat more awkwardly than the previous one, swiftly dragged the tall man back a few paces—did her eyes deceive her?--to what looked like the same van that had consumed the multi-colored human. As the van door slid closed, the damp cloth, no longer needed, was flung unceremoniously out its window to lie among the other litter scattered about the drinking station.

  


She landed with an awkward thump, unaccustomed to contact with the hard paved surface the humans loved to cover their cities with. She was keenly uncomfortable to be this low to the ground; being nose to nose with the awful metallic vehicles and their grumbling roars gave her an unpleasant sense of vulnerability. Wings half extended, she hopped twice towards the seemingly innocuous rag, wondering if it bore any clues as to where the attacker came from or who it was.

  


Sudden dizziness surged; a sickening, sweetish smell arose from the rag and set alarm bells ringing in her head. She lunged backwards, beak open in disgust; shaking her head until the threatening dizziness dissipated. Well. No question as to why the attacker had used it—the fumes must have been overwhelming when the rag was clamped so tightly to her human's friend's face.

  


And now. One. Two. Three. If all her human's friends were taken, then her own friend. Was now... She was not even conscious of launching upwards again, desperate to gain altitude. Horrible singing blankness in her mind, muscles strained beyond endurance, she clove the air like flame as she retraced her path back to her aerie and her human.

  


Landmarks below her, increasingly familiar. There—her roof, her home, and standing solitary and tense waiting upon it—her friend. She tore through the air, frantic to reach him.

  


And—again. Her heartbeat accelerated wildly as she saw a dark-clad figure slide out from the solid bank of air-conditioning machinery that lined the roof. This one, as the others had been, was swift, silent, and clutched something small and malevolent-looking in its right hand. Too far, she was too far—she spoke to him silently, screaming to him to turn, to dodge, to _run_!

  


She saw him tense, and look up to her. He began to turn, but the black-clad figure was upon him, jabbing what looked like the glittering fang of a viper into his exposed neck. His body went rigid. He dropped, and the figure callously let him fall. Surprisingly, this attacker remained standing, silently, over her human for a moment. Unlike the other ones, it ripped the covering off its head, revealing itself to be a female human, with hair like corn silk. The woman raised her head, meeting her eyes with a steady coldness—she was reminded of the gaze of a snake, contemplating its prey. A sudden tapping sounded, and two figures burst from the mews door to join the attacker. They quickly gathered up her friend, and made off with him as if he was an unwieldy parcel. The mews door—the door to what had been her private, inviolate sanctuary 'til now—closed silently, and the woman stood a moment more, gloating, daring her to come to her friend's aid. Seeing her light upon the telephone wires, keeping her distance, the attacker gave a contemptuous sneer and strode away.

  


Boom. The hollow sound of the mews door shutting closed upon her like a blow. She blinked, not seeing the rooftop in front of her. Failed. Homeless. Her friend, her ally, the candle that lit her soul, torn from her.

  


Blackness rolled over her like a wave, and she knew nothing more.

  


**Author's Note:**

> Based upon FOB's video for “The Phoenix,” written from the perspective of Pete's falcon. First Bandom fic I ever wrote; nearly five years ago. Endless thanks to Snitches for beta’ing, encouragement, and a small kick in the pants to spur me to finally post!
> 
> Saw this video long ago and thought, “Cell phones are a thing, Pete.” Wondered why on earth he’d use a falcon. My brain replied that cell phones can be traced and tapped of course, so obviously something else had to be at play. 
> 
> Yeah, so, okay, I gave Pete telepathy with birds of prey. And a low-level telekinesis to mess with surveillance electronics. Just go with it...


End file.
